Gone with the river stream
by Galadwen1977
Summary: Caranthir in Doriath makes a horrible mistake. Mentioned Caranthir/his canonical wife, warning: canonical character death.


**Gone with the river stream**

His eyes were glass-like, unseeing, clouded by pain.

I didn't have to call for a healer and ask him - I know a mortal blow when I see it. In addition, this one was killing slowly, torturously: bottom-up, breaking beneath the lower edge of the breastplate into the bowels: from the lower abdomen to the sternum. A last attempt to fight from an already defeated opponent – one lying on the ground, with a broken sword in his hand. Someone undressed the dying man from his armor, but no more could be done: any attempt to cure and save him would undoubtedly only prolong his agony.

"Moryo... It wasn't supposed to end like this," he tried to find my hand as I knelt down to him. I could barely understand him as he was gasping between the syllables and his strenght was quickly leaving him. "He was supposed to be mine. He could have been mine if…" He turned his head a little, as if to look toward his dead opponent. The boy - and Dior Eluchíl, Thingol's heir and the last king of Doriath - really looked like an early matured boy - was now lying on the floor just a few paces away in a pool of blood, huddled together, his black hair glued to his face. The wound that killed him was, unlike the one he inflicted, pure; he had to die instantly or within a moment.

"You know..." the wounded wheezed, "...that until now... I was really feeling like... that nothing could ever happen to me…"

I would scream with anger, helpless rage. But my chest clutched so much that I couldn't even make a sound.

"I hate her," he continued with his last strength. "Let her be devoured by the darkness, and her whole family... It's all her fault... We could have been happy, do you believe? He could have been mine..." Blood flowed from his nose in a trickle, mingling with sweat on his face and temples. "With Thingol... as an ally... we could have conquered Angband."

"Be quiet, Tyelcormo. You are rambling," I found my voice. "Don´t move. A healer will be here soon."

He laughed - a strange, convulsive sound that changed to a moan. His free hand squeezed more firmly into the wound that ripped his abdomen.

"As if he could save me," he rasped, turning his unfocused gaze aside. "Sornetáro!"

"Here I am, Lord Turcafinwë," his commander knelt down to him from the other side. "What do you command?"

"Dior's brats ... Take care of them. Revenge me. "

"Sir, Lord Curufinwë is already chasing Queen Nimloth and the children. If it is she who has your Jewel with her, he will catch her and punish her."

"That's not enough," Tyelcormo said. As he moved uneasily, a stronger strand of dark blood spurted between his fingers, pressed against his stomach. "They know it here well, they'll try to dissappear. Make sure they don't escape. None of them. Swear that you will not fail."

"I swear…"

"Go, then. Now. Let the swords scatter them, the wolves and the Enemy's creatures tear them… Let them be cursed forever…"

"Tyelcormo..." I squeezed his hand. A chill ran down my back, like the frost from outside, just more frightening. "You can't be serious. The Stone must be returned to our hands, yes. But to hurt the children? " How could he?

The edge of the memory has stuck into my soul, all the terrible, evil last words that have fallen between us, mine and hers, my angry explosion, her supplications, her disgust, contempt in her eyes when she turned away from me... The last bond with the past, with the impression that even someone like me can live a happy life. The last thing I have left from Thornwen... The blood of my blood... I hurt my child as well, though not with a sword and violence.

_"If you will go to Doriath, to murder my mother's relatives in cold blood, we see each other one last time. And I'll never call you my father again," she says in my memory._

_"You know I have to," I answer. "I'm not a monster, you know that. I only do what is necessary. Who else should understand it if not you?"_

_"I'll never understand," he utters. "I only know one thing: if you leave now, it will be clear to me that you have never loved my mother. Otherwise, you wouldn't be so inclined to make yourself a killer again. To trample your honor, and hence hers. To spat on the remembrance of her. To do exactly what you know would break her heart. If she was here…"_

_"Enough! Be quiet, lass!" Like many times before, the blood is boiling in my veins, rising into my face. Anger takes me, even stronger than despair. Is this how Curufinwë was feeling when his son told him the nearly same thing, as she have said to me just now? Those over-wise descendants of the third generation of Fëanáro's line - so confident and full of condemnation to us, their fathers. I close my fists tightly in rage. "I swore."_

_"You swore to her, as well!" she yells at me. "And if you go, do not look further for me on Amon Ereb when you come back." Her face is flushed with redness, inherited from me._

_"Don't you dare to talk to me like that!" I grab her wrists and squeeze so hard that she hisses in pain. "I will do my duty, Morialmë. And you…"_

_"And I'm not your daughter anymore!" she barks. "Never again!" She pushes me away, turns on her heels and is gone, a cloud of black hair over a black dress like a storm cloud._

_Blood of my blood. My own child. I know I saw her for the last time._

Tyelcormo was the blood of my blood as well, and he was loosing it more and more with every second, every laborious blow of his heart.

Children. Our own and alien, our curse ...

"You don't get it, Moryo," he focused hard on me. "Silmaril… is not enough… She took everything from me… and I will take everything from her… I will unroot… that snakes seed… to the last one… Go, Sornetáro. Do what I command."

My brother's captain rose silently, bowed, and set out to the exit of the throne room without looking back. I stayed with my personal guard by my brother. The wounded was breathing heavily, gasping.

"Now... it will be... up to you..." he tried one last time. "You have to... get... back... Don't let me fall... into the eternal darkness... The Oath... must be... Ah!"

He tensed like a bow, something slipped out of his ripped abdommen in a stream of blood, and the blood came out of his mouth as well. The hand he had been clutching to his injury had dropped to the floor. His eyes remained blindly staring into the darkness.

I took off my dirty glove and carefully pulled his eyelids over them and straightened his arms along his body. The third of us: after Telvo and father. Did we really think that death does not concern us until we fulfill our task to the end?

"What now, Lord?" one of my commanders said to me after a while. I glared at him with a furious look, my teeth pressed. I knew he was right when he urged me - we must not delay. My brother is dead, but we haven't brought the hunt to the end yet.

I got up heavily from the ground.

"Let's go," I said. "We'll find the silmaril and end up with the madness, or this all will be for nothing."

I looked one last time on dead Tyelcormo and my second glance was on Dior Eluchíl who gave him a deadly blow. He could have been mine and all this wouldn't have happened, my brother said. If only Lúthien was more willing. If only she preferred the Lord of the Noble Elves to a Secondborn rogue. Dior would have been Tyelcormo's son and Doriath our ally, not an enemy. The fallen and broken up enemy. And I wouldn't have to lose my only child.

I resisted the sudden need to kick the dead body of Beren's offspring.

The fighting in the Thousand Caves was far from over. At every step, behind every corner, we encountered makeshift barricades from furniture, hidden archers and hastily set traps. We proceeded slowly, from skirmish to skirmish. In many places, candlesticks and lanterns have fallen, oil spilled on tiles and stone floors, decorative tapestries on the walls outblazed, and the fire cut off our path.

"I say to myself," I growled as the flames again dammed the corridor ahead of us, "that this maze must have a second exit. Or more exits. Why would Sindar otherwise recede into the caves and try to slow us down? They wouldn't get into a trap like that. They are certainly trying to get women and children out of here, and those who shoot at us from backup and burn what they can, must cover them. Where would you lead the retreat passes if you were them?"

"To the river," my captain suggested. It sounded a bit like a question.

"Yes," I said. "To the river. There, I would have some boats ready for an emergency, and there I would try to get those I want to protect. Let´s go. We will surprise them - if the refugees withdraw to Esgalduin, we must try to get there before them. In case they have the silmaril with them."

We did not return to the main gate from caves. We have just reached the part of Menegroth, where the better chambers on the right side of the corridor turned outward, into the woods, and had windows - on a slope above the ground, steep, but not so dangerous, where a strong and skilful man may be able to creep down to a more flat terrain.

There was icy cold outside. The night had already fallen, the air crackled with frost, and the layer of snow covering the forests of Doriath stiffened into an icy crust, crisp and frail. From the caves we heard the sounds of struggle, screaming and lamentation, but here all was peacefull. The longest night of the year, when the sun hides for a long time, but just starts to count down to spring. We set off, quickly and subtly like shadows, in a direction where we could see the unsteady flow of the river, half hidden by the crust of ice. The army of the cursed. A group of silent and deadly spirits from ghostly legends. Ready to kill and be killed. And I was in command of them.

After all, what else was left of my life and was worthy enough? Only the silmaril, nothing else. Thornwen is dead and Morialmë renounced me. I no longer have a family other than my brothers, and a task other than the one our father has entrusted to us.

Cold and darkness, high stars, hilt of weapon in clenched fist - isn't it the same as it was in the middle of that endless night when I met Thornwen? But then, long ago, we came as rescuers, as glorified heroes.

_We are all still shaken by Telvo's death, though we try not to show it - except for his twin, naturally. Even I feel horrible doubts: couldn't it be me who threw the torch that killed him? In the horror of dark thoughts and the desperate effort to keep at least the second Ambarussa alive, I am actually glad about the distant glow of fires on the coast south of Drengist._

_We arrive just in time to save the rest of Círdan's people, who have not been able to evacuate on ships in time and are desperately defending themselves from the great number of Morgoth's creatures. It is up to the ankles of the snow everywhere and the flakes are blowing into our faces. The snow in which the red blood of the fallen and the black that have belonged to the enemies form the same dark spots dripping into each other._

_Among the saved are Cirdan's soldiers, sailors and fishermen, but also a large group of children and women - not just wives and mothers, but also healers, weavers, craftswomen and artists of all kinds who can be found among the Eldar. And Thornwen - a self-confident, self-assured girl, perhaps too thin and angular for the Noldor's taste, good-looking, but no beauty in comparison to others. I have never known a woman who would have been a merchant before; never before her. She conveys salt to the east of Beleriand and ore from dwarves in Ered Luin back to the west, fine fur from Hithlum and heavy red wine from the south. She comes from Eglarest and have been stucked in the north of Falas under the siege. At first, I do not understand a word from the strange dialect the Círdan´s Teleri speak, but I immediately fall for her. Like a fool. Like a featherbrain, at the very beginning of the war. Under the stars, with snow underfoot and air full of frosty flakes that land in her fair hair._

_There are things that even you cannot influence with your mind, Carnistir, my mother would have said if she knew about it. And she would smile._

No. It was a folly to think of Thornwen and my mother now, because both of them would condemn what I was doing. Just like Morialmë, by her looks through and through my daughter, but inside all her mother...

We glided through the winter landscape on a moonless night like on bat wings. We have heard the murmur of the strong flow of the icy river and the hiss of the wind in the dry reeds and willows on the shore.

"Over there, sir. Look," one of my captains touched my sleeve. A dim light flickered to the left before us for a moment. A child wailed, and then the palm of someones hand choked the sound. Apparently we have found the second entrance to Thingol's caves.

With a move of my hand, I sent my men to Esgalduin. The shores here were hardened by frost, snow blown away as icy winds raced down the river bed. We proceeded quietly, but trotting. A moment later, a view of what we had expected opened up ahead: a pier and a boathouse with boats hauled ashore. They were all light rowboats that could be run on the water in no time and flee downstream, out of this fallen kingdom.

But not today. They will not leave today.

Three men who guarded the shipyard died before they could scream. We hid in the shade of timbered walls and brushwood. We waited.

Not for long.

It was a medium-sized group, no more than sixty souls, and mostly women with children accompanied by a few fighters. They had wounded and barely grown toddlers with them, so they moved slowly and more noisy than could be expected from the forest elves. Their leader was tall, with silver hair shining into the darkness. Surely he had managed to gather this incongruous group on the way out of the caves, on the run, and now he thinks he has already won, succeeded and saved them.

_"If you will go to Doriath, to murder my mother's relatives in cold blood, we see each other one last time."_

I gripped the sword hilt more firmly. No. I'm not going to be discouraged, not by anyone, not by you, my daughter, who has already condemned me. The only thing that matters is the silmaril.

We rushed from the shipyard to unsuspecting refugees like a whirlwind.

The women began to scream, the children started to cry in terror. Someone had dropped a light, so far covered, into the snow, and the pale shine of the Noldorin star lamp lit up the scene.

Wait - Noldorin?

A blond woman in the hood, who had dropped it and now was standing a step behind the leader of Sindar, pulled her weapon from the scabbard with her right hand, while holding a baby, a little girl, on her side with her left arm. The babe was a toddler with dark hair and little face flushed with crying...

For a crazy moment I got the impression that I saw Thornwen with little Morialmë. Like when the goblins attacked us, while we were searching for copper veins in Ered Luin: she was ready to defend herself and the child, not just relying on me. On me... My sword hand dropped.

She finally drew her short sword, side by side with the Sindarin lord, and her cloak's hood slid over her shoulders. Her hair was not ashen as my dead wife had, and I knew her face, albeit from other places, from the old days...

"Artanis!" I couldn't believe my eyes.

Of course, we've heard that she lives here and is married. That she now, at the time of war, conceived and gave birth to a child, foolishly as I before her, we haven´t known. Her brothers were all dead and she herself had no reason to send messages to Amon Ereb.

My men, one by one, hesitated when they met a Nolde from Finwë's house, they delayed the attack, awaiting my command.

"So it will be you, Caranthir, who will kill me?" She put the girl, with the bag that the child held in her arms, on the ground and stood between us and her. She spoke sindarin and had contempt in her eyes. And a dark flame, wild and implacable, as it once was. "How unfortunate... cousin. But no surprise after what your brothers did to mine. And maybe I'll kill you."

She stepped forward, but only slightly, trying not to break the defensive circle. The few moments of my hesitation were enough: we lost a moment of surprise, and although we had four times more fighters than them, I understood that they were going to sell us their lives for a great price.

"Artanis," I repeated once more, helplessly.

"Kill me," she lifted her head after a moment, staring straight into my eyes. Her expression chilled me. A swarm of bees swirled in my head - too late I tried to dodge her eyesight, and I couldn't. Her voice whispered, unknown to me, whether or not inside my brain: "Kill me like you murdered my relatives in Alqualondë, and be damned. Or let me pass, with my people."

_If you will go to Doriath, to murder my mother's relatives in cold blood..._

_You're going to murder like in Alqualondë…_

_You're going to murder like an hour ago in the Thousand Caves…_

_You're going to murder here, on the river bank, as an orc, slaying helpless maidens and little children, to cover the white snow with red blood..._

_To whom do you serve - yourself, your father, your Oath, the Enemy? And isn't it the same, in the end?_

"Let them go," I snapped. My tongue was strangely stiff, and I felt throbbing pain behind my forehead.

"My Lord?" the commander of my personal guard turned to me in disbelief.

"You have heard," I repeated. "Back off. Let them go. "

Sindar lowered the boats into the icy waters of Esgalduin, the women put their children in them, than they helped the wounded, while the few men able to fight stood between them and us. Nor did they believe my sudden mercy. And why they should?

The silver-haired lord jumped into the boat the last, bouncing off the jetty, and the five boats flew across the water as the stream caught them. Artanis didn't look back. She just briefly touched the Sindarin commander´s shoulder before taking the oar, just like him. The child crouched between them, a knot in her lap.

I stiffened. A fleeting and eloquent touch that I had given Thornwen a thousand times: when we got out of danger, when I wanted to show her my affection, but something more intimate was not appropriate before people, when I wished her good night. When we said goodbye before I left for Bragollach without knowing it was for the last time. A statement of solidarity, support. Undying love.

A silver-haired man from Thingol's kin. My golden-haired cousin. And the baby, dark like a raven.

No. Like a Nightingale.

I cursed at the same time as a silver-gold flash came from the receding boat.

And again.

"By all Valaraukar of the North! Where did I put my eyes? After them!"

The child wasn't Artanis´ daughter.

She was Dior´s. And she had hidden the Great Jewel in her baby bundle, instead of the doll and wood carved animals.

I rushed along the shore of Esgalduin, ignoring the whipping twigs or the frozen roots that tried to trip my feet. But it is not so easy to catch up with the flowing boats, driven by desperate, scared rowers. But despair was also driving me. I've been so close. So close. A moment ago, only five steps and my cousin were separating me from the silmaril, from the fulfillment of the Oath. Just a few worthless lives...

I lost my helmet, maybe I threw it away, I didn't know. I could feel something running down my temples, pinching - sweat mixed with blood from tiny scraps on my forehead and cheeks, scratches inflicted by frosted branches of willows and alder.

Not everything has been lost yet. Esgalduin is a wild river full of stones and rapids. It was freezing, the water in the riverbed was low. If the boats come to a spot where it will be needed to drag them on land, we have hope. The distance between my company and the refugees was already halved and we were speeding after them like deer hunters, tirelessly. We pulled their lead with each jump. They cannot hide in the dark now: the moon has risen above the forest, pierced through the clouds and silvered the landscape with its brightness.

Now the last one of the boats slowed down even more. And a little more again...

It wasn't the one in which Artanis was sitting with Dior's baby. Perhaps her husband was planning to sacrifice the refugees from the last boat to slow us down, but he will not succeed. I am not going to hesitate for the second time. I have enough men and I am able to pour this land with more blood without the second thought. Artanis deceived me, enchanted me, who knows how she had done it, what kind of Maiarin spells she had learned from the former Queen of this kingdom. So let her suffer. My anger throbbed in my veins with the blood rising to my face.

The last barge swung, obviously faced with increasing difficulties. Now one of the men in it rose from the bench, dropped the oar...

I gasped, lowered my head to avoid the low branch before me. I made three more long jumps - closer and closer to the rowboat. Twenty steps. Now only ten, and the half-frozen surface of the river full of raised boulders between us.

At that moment something struck me. Under my raised sword arm, exactly in the spot where the armor sleeves are attached to it´s body. So hard that the impact threw me back, to the trunk of the nearest weeping willow. My sword fell out of my paralyzed fingers. The falling arm came across something that kept it from going down. I tried to push it away - and the pain exploded in my chest.

Still not understanding what had happened, I forced myself to stand up, to find my weapon on the ground and throw myself again after the escaping boats. The first one was now landing on the opposite bank, and the refugees were about to carry it by land around the wildest rapids with waterfalls.

I can't stop. I can't rest now. I can´t…

The second arrow hit me in the hip, just below the armor. Today, I did not take any plates on me, perhaps suitable for riders, but too heavy and clumsy for a walking warrior wandering through the forest or underground. Just a chainmail and leather...

My leg buckled. With a scream I fell to my knee. My eyes darkened and the blood suddenly filled my mouth. Blood, blood, too much blood... Bright, full of air, running down my armor, bubbling on my lips. When I looked down, I finally found out that the first dart I took in my armpit had dug almost whole into my body. As if I was looking at someone else, from high and afar, I immediately realized that it had to break my lung. That's why I'm short of breath. That's why I choke with blood…

It didn't hurt as badly as I had expected. Not a half as much as my leg cut by an orc blade in Nirnaeth. Nowhere as much as my soul on that horrible day at Amon Ereb, after Bragollach, when Morialmë wept in my arms and did not even have to say that her mother had fallen, when defending the refugees from the Lake Helevorn.

"Lord! Lord, are you hurt?"

Only now the commander of my party catched up with me, landing on his knees beside me, supported me.

Nelyafinwë has to know that Artanis holds the silmaril. That she flees south with it on the river... I tried to say it, but instead of words, a new red stream burst out of my lips. I fought for breath I was increasingly lacking, the lungs failing, Morgoth's flame settled in my chest. I choked, sputtered blood. My commander exchanged a glance with the approaching soldiers. All-saying glance.

I saw him like through a fog. Like through the smoke of the fires that had then rushed from the North and swallowed the grassy plains of Ard-Galen, the ever-green pine trees around my fortress above the silver lake, and finally my wife's dead body.

"Nelyafinwë…" I tried for a second time. "…The Jewel…"

Because without a silmaril I am lost, I will fall forever into the eternal darkness. I will not be with Thornwen even in the Halls of Mandos.

I will be with her never again, I understood suddenly in the last brighter flash of consciousness. With the Oath fulfilled or without it. She won't forgive me this. Neither my wife nor our only child.

I couldn't see the soldier of Doriath in the last boat putting his bow for the last time.

The third arrow went through my throat. It didn't hurt. And the darkness surrounding me seemed to be soft and inviting.


End file.
